So every calculus student should be thrown out of school because they didn't credit their test answers to Newton, and therefore plagiarized him?
No, that is considered common knowledge. The line between the ideas you must attribute and those you don't have to attribute is very wide and fuzzy, but it's there.
But, but, how can an idea be stolen? Isn't the whole point that ideas are supposed to be valueless since they can be copied effortlessly?
This is the fundamental distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Copyright is about protecting the value of the particular expression of an idea. Plagiarism is about intellectual dishonesty. Copyright infringement is illegal. Plagiarism is not.
The reason plagiarism is morally questionable is not because it devalues ideas (as you said, that is impossible since ideas have no intrinsic value). Plagiarism is repugnant because it devalues people. When you come up with a great idea, and your coworkers or friends pat you on the back and say "Nice one, cublicledrone, that's a brilliant idea! I wish I could think of things like that," doesn't it make you feel good?
Why should another person take that idea, attribute it to themselves, and get happy feel-good comments for it? They didn't earn that respect. They stole it from you, and as a result you are not as highly valued because the credit for the idea has been spread over multiple people.
Plagiarism is ultimately a problem of ego. In an ideal world, the ideas we create only have value in their application to the improvement of human life. In the real world, part of the motivation for producing new ideas is the respect we gain by proving ourselves to be creative and intelligent. Plagiarism is offensive because it mocks this respect and makes it hard to determine who really deserves credit for an idea.
Now if someone reads about an idea, digests it, and is able to communicate the idea BETTER, is that plagiarism?
In scientific circles, yes. Even if you completely rephrase the idea. You must provide an attribution to the source of the idea. There are exceptions for things which are considered "common knowledge" -- we don't have to credit Newton every time we use the equation F = ma, and it's true that the line is blurry. However, reading about an idea, digesting it, and recommunicating it in your own words without attribution to the source is plagiarism, and will get you kicked out of a lot of schools in a hurry.
It is important, also, to realize that there is no law against plagiarism. Copyright legally protects the particular expression of ideas, but the only thing preventing a person from plagiarizing is a guilty conscience (and the risk of being ejected from an academic institution).
Now that I know that passing on the right is expected behavior, I will stay in the right hand lane and cut 10-20% off my travel time.
It's considered normal by the drivers, but in my experience the Washington state troopers will ticket you if they catch you doing it. Once you are significantly south of Tacoma it's fairly safe to open it up the rest of the way to Portland.
Once you hit Oregon, though, the cops will practically smoke a joint with you as long as you're not waving a gun around or something like that... (STATE cops, don't try any funny stuff with Portland city cops:-) )
Go ahead, mod me -1 Troll, but isn't it just abusing people's trust to trick them with excuses like "I'm stuck in traffic" when you really have no good excuse.
If you seek truth, humans are not (and never have been) the place to find it.
It definitely wouldn't work here in the Pacific Northwest. The culture here is to never honk the horn at all, unless you are literally a quarter second away from colliding with another vehicle.
You can always tell the "foreigners," by the honking of their horns. And the hilarious looks on their faces when they get passed on the right side (which is considered normal driving behavior around here)...
On a related note: It's illegal to make threats against the President of the US. It is not illegal to think about killing the President.
In a sense, momentarily recording your thoughts in the electrical and magnetic states of a machine (computer memory) and then erasing them, is equivalent to that thought being confined within your head. (This point is arguable, hence my use of the phrase "In a sense", please discuss this point, dear Slashdot readers.)
Or, for instance, what if I tap out the message "I want to *** the President" (censored for moronic yet obvious reasons) in Morse code on my table top? The existence of the message in physical form outside of my head is only temporary. Would this be considered an actionable threat against the President?
At what point do we draw the line of "Sanctity of Mind," and why does it make sense to draw it where we do? Just because a thought momentarily exists in physical form, does that mean we should treat that thought any differently than if it had remained, secret forever, inside somebody's head?
And should we hold people accountable for information that exists merely because of a "technicality" (a piece of software being configured a certain way, in this case) when there was obviously no intent for that information to ever remain in concrete form?
So, you have employees in your company who verifiably enjoy ripping off GPL code against the license, and you actually trust them when they say "Okay, okay, we won't do that anymore?"
The people in question need to be fired immediately. They will bring ruin on your company.
In other shocking news, the USA has had an income tax for much of the last century.
Come on... This only seems bizarre because we don't have it here in the US. The income tax also seemed ludicrous when it was first created (some would argue it still is ludicrous).
Supposedly there's a horde of paying Slashdot readers who get to see the article early in order to "proofread" it, in order to prevent these sorts of mishaps...
Clearly, those people are either stupid, or were denied their coffee fix this morning...
Here's a simple solution for corporations, to try to stem the tide of idiots who double-click on attachments. Distribute a company-wide memo stating something along the lines of the following:
"A new company policy is hereby enacted: It is forbidden for any user on the corporate network to execute any binary email attachment of any kind, including any attachment from anyone within the network. We will occassionally enforce this measure by sending dummy attachments to all corporate users which will report your workstation to network operations should you click on the attachment. Doing so will be grounds for immediate dismissal. We reserve the right to be sneaky, so your best policy for keeping your job secure is to simply never click on an attachment. Thanks, and have a nice week."
Why, oh why, oh why, would ANYONE, EVER, run any unverifiable code on his computer?
Considering the number of people I've encountered who don't even know what a "program" is (all they know are that there are a set of different boxes on their screen, each of which does something different), how can you expect them to understand what executable code is, or how it gets run, or why it shouldn't be run?
You've seen polarized power plugs, right? The ones with one blade slightly wider than the other. This is to prevent people with no knowledge of electricity from inserting the plug into the receptacle in a way that will blow up their equipment.
Microsoft software is like having unpolarized plugs. To someone who knows what they are doing, this is not a problem, but for the average user, the useless ability to plug it in backwards has no beneficial properties whatsoever.
There should be no way to run an executable from a mail client. Not even a dialog that asks "Are you sure you want to run this?" People avoid thinking by simply clicking "Yes" to any question they are asked. It needs to be forbidden to execute an attachment. If you really, really must, then you can save it to a folder somewhere, then run it from there.
Microsoft's practices of allowing users to perform any bone-headed, ill-advised actions they wish, should rank right up there with the irresponsibility of not supplying polarized plugs for electrical equipment. In fact, this situation is even more serious, since an incorrectly inserted power plug only has the potential to destroy the machine and/or the user, whereas a virus infection in a corporate network can potentially impact thousands of people.
How about a recording of someone humming a famous tune or of someone who recorded themselves playing an instrument to the tune of a famous song as a demo recording in hopes that they would be scouted by someone (for a gig or a record-contact, etc.)?
Then that person would be infringing copyright, unless they'd received permission to distribute the recording. Hence, it would be a "true" positive, in the sense that they are illegally using the material.
People should stop behaving in such a sheep-like fashion. Actually posting that a company 'owns' you and believing it? Good god man - for once the cliche applies, go out and get a life. And a backbone to go with that life
To this, I would like to add that if everybody simply followed this advice, it would be impossible for employers to make such insane demands on employees, because firing them would no longer be an option: anybody they subsequently hired to replace you would also tell the employer to fuck off in such a situation.
As long as there are people willing to work like slaves, then employers will always to have an incentive to fire those who don't.
I blame the "sheep" far more than I blame the employers. The employer is just doing what makes capitalistic sense: getting more for his/her money.
As a woman I resent your implication. And you get modded up as +5 Insightful?
He's insightful precisely because he pointed out the sexism quite clearly. I don't think he was trying to be offensive. There is a stereotype that women cannot work on cars. Now we have a car manufacturer reinforcing that stereotype.
I'd be getting pissed at Volvo, not the OP.
Oh, and by the way:
Women can do the same tasks as men, usually better.
How are you not being a sexist pig? Oh, and try to piss off a cliff without using your hands... I bet I can do better:-)
What was my surprise, when after 500 km, stopping in a gas station, the hood simply didn't open! Needless to say, that was my last Ford.
Didn't open didn't open? Or didn't open because you didn't know about the locking lever near the hood latch that you have to press upward in order to disengage the latch?
Please tell me you didn't get rid of your car because you didn't even bother reading the manual...
I mean, seriosuly, why do they need a bonnett. Is it just that a hood isn't stylish enough?
You are, of course, aware that "bonnet" is what the Brits call the hood of a car?
Another hint: they don't call the trunk a "trunk" either.
And of course, the article clearly stated that the reason women don't need a hood is because they're too stupid to know what to do once it's open. Which is, of course, an extremely offensive and idiotic viewpoint.
I can't see how this Mike Anderer guy could keep work (let alone secure clients) if he's using "kepp" for "keep" in professional interbusinees (oh no! sp!!) dealinks.
You clearly work too far down on the "pecking order" to realize that most executives are actually buffoons. At the low levels of corporate structure, the grunts get memos that have been carefully scrutinized by secretaries, legal eagles, etc. The boss may have written it originally, but it's been edited so you don't realize he's an idiot.
OTOH, in a smaller company where you have easier access to the higher echelons of power structure (or, if you happen to have a way of intercepting communications between top-level execs) you quite commonly see grammar and spelling of the sort demonstrated in this memo. These people usually tend to be articulate in person (this is a necessary trait for any negotiator) but they can be absolutely abysmal spellers.
This guy probably hasn't gotten fired for being an idiot because his boss probably makes even more mistakes than he does.
Don't make the extremely wrong assumption that the people at the top are there because they are much more intelligent than you. They are much more devious, better at ass kissing, and have people working for them whose only job is to prevent them from looking like morons.
While a hash table can have an O(1) search time, it is sometimes desirable to accept an O(2) or O(3) search time
That statement just proved that you have no idea what the O() notation means. Please, take off the teaching cap, you're going to hurt somebody.
I'm starting to wonder if you are, in fact, a very good troll. You refer to Dr. Dobbs as a "computer science journal," you make references to nonsensical concepts like "O(2)", you claim to have made a "publication" which actually turns out to be a poorly spelled posting on a programming discussion board, and you do all this as you criticize actual computer science students for not having learned anything in school.
That so many people have fallen for it thus far is utterly amazing to me.
"you don't know anything about calculating algorithms to execute at O(n), O(log n), O(1), etc."
Knowing what the term means, and knowing how to actually prove that an algorithm is O(x), are two different things. Can you prove that general sorting cannot be less than O(n log n)? This is fundamental. If you can't do it, you do not know computer science. (Flip side of coin: if you can, then you are at least heading the right direction).
"game programming is not real comp-sci!" (tell that to my collision algorithms or research into better timing methods)
A hobbyist tinkering in the garage does not a scientist make. Put out a publication comparing your methods with other known methods. Give theoretical upper and lower bounds on run time, memory usage, jitter, etc. Criticize yourself and explain the defects in your methods. Submit it to peer scrutiny. That's science.
Comp-Sci is great. I love the concepts of comp-sci.
Wow, it's really great to see a spectator who appreciates our sport. Sadly, merely looking up to someone does not magically transfer their knowledge into your skull.
It's just too bad that comp-sci isn't very well taught anymore. 90% of the current crop of comp-sci students should probably be flunked.
Sorry, you don't have the authority to sit on the sidelines of a field you admit you having no training in, and criticize the methods by which it is taught. Not to even mention that gigantic generalization you make by assuming that whatever your limited experience of CS teaching methods is must be how it's taught everywhere.
You feel better about yourself because you labeled a valid opinion as a troll? Dude, you need to get out more.
You need to get out more. I suggest college as a worthwhile destination.
Slashdot Mirror
No, that is considered common knowledge. The line between the ideas you must attribute and those you don't have to attribute is very wide and fuzzy, but it's there.
This is the fundamental distinction between copyright infringement and plagiarism. Copyright is about protecting the value of the particular expression of an idea. Plagiarism is about intellectual dishonesty. Copyright infringement is illegal. Plagiarism is not.
The reason plagiarism is morally questionable is not because it devalues ideas (as you said, that is impossible since ideas have no intrinsic value). Plagiarism is repugnant because it devalues people. When you come up with a great idea, and your coworkers or friends pat you on the back and say "Nice one, cublicledrone, that's a brilliant idea! I wish I could think of things like that," doesn't it make you feel good?
Why should another person take that idea, attribute it to themselves, and get happy feel-good comments for it? They didn't earn that respect. They stole it from you, and as a result you are not as highly valued because the credit for the idea has been spread over multiple people.
Plagiarism is ultimately a problem of ego. In an ideal world, the ideas we create only have value in their application to the improvement of human life. In the real world, part of the motivation for producing new ideas is the respect we gain by proving ourselves to be creative and intelligent. Plagiarism is offensive because it mocks this respect and makes it hard to determine who really deserves credit for an idea.
In scientific circles, yes. Even if you completely rephrase the idea. You must provide an attribution to the source of the idea. There are exceptions for things which are considered "common knowledge" -- we don't have to credit Newton every time we use the equation F = ma, and it's true that the line is blurry. However, reading about an idea, digesting it, and recommunicating it in your own words without attribution to the source is plagiarism, and will get you kicked out of a lot of schools in a hurry.
It is important, also, to realize that there is no law against plagiarism. Copyright legally protects the particular expression of ideas, but the only thing preventing a person from plagiarizing is a guilty conscience (and the risk of being ejected from an academic institution).
The intelligentsia should start a colony on Antarctica :-) Beautiful scenery and all that... A little chilly though.
It's considered normal by the drivers, but in my experience the Washington state troopers will ticket you if they catch you doing it. Once you are significantly south of Tacoma it's fairly safe to open it up the rest of the way to Portland.
Once you hit Oregon, though, the cops will practically smoke a joint with you as long as you're not waving a gun around or something like that... (STATE cops, don't try any funny stuff with Portland city cops :-) )
"Dude, you're getting a Rollins" just doesn't have the same ring to it...
If you seek truth, humans are not (and never have been) the place to find it.
Go figure.
You can always tell the "foreigners," by the honking of their horns. And the hilarious looks on their faces when they get passed on the right side (which is considered normal driving behavior around here)...
And then the gorilla kicks the 90 year old square in the groin, then mumbles "Aw shit, sorry about that mate."
In a sense, momentarily recording your thoughts in the electrical and magnetic states of a machine (computer memory) and then erasing them, is equivalent to that thought being confined within your head. (This point is arguable, hence my use of the phrase "In a sense", please discuss this point, dear Slashdot readers.)
Or, for instance, what if I tap out the message "I want to *** the President" (censored for moronic yet obvious reasons) in Morse code on my table top? The existence of the message in physical form outside of my head is only temporary. Would this be considered an actionable threat against the President?
At what point do we draw the line of "Sanctity of Mind," and why does it make sense to draw it where we do? Just because a thought momentarily exists in physical form, does that mean we should treat that thought any differently than if it had remained, secret forever, inside somebody's head?
And should we hold people accountable for information that exists merely because of a "technicality" (a piece of software being configured a certain way, in this case) when there was obviously no intent for that information to ever remain in concrete form?
The people in question need to be fired immediately. They will bring ruin on your company.
Come on... This only seems bizarre because we don't have it here in the US. The income tax also seemed ludicrous when it was first created (some would argue it still is ludicrous).
Clearly, those people are either stupid, or were denied their coffee fix this morning...
"A new company policy is hereby enacted: It is forbidden for any user on the corporate network to execute any binary email attachment of any kind, including any attachment from anyone within the network. We will occassionally enforce this measure by sending dummy attachments to all corporate users which will report your workstation to network operations should you click on the attachment. Doing so will be grounds for immediate dismissal. We reserve the right to be sneaky, so your best policy for keeping your job secure is to simply never click on an attachment. Thanks, and have a nice week."
Considering the number of people I've encountered who don't even know what a "program" is (all they know are that there are a set of different boxes on their screen, each of which does something different), how can you expect them to understand what executable code is, or how it gets run, or why it shouldn't be run?
You've seen polarized power plugs, right? The ones with one blade slightly wider than the other. This is to prevent people with no knowledge of electricity from inserting the plug into the receptacle in a way that will blow up their equipment.
Microsoft software is like having unpolarized plugs. To someone who knows what they are doing, this is not a problem, but for the average user, the useless ability to plug it in backwards has no beneficial properties whatsoever.
There should be no way to run an executable from a mail client. Not even a dialog that asks "Are you sure you want to run this?" People avoid thinking by simply clicking "Yes" to any question they are asked. It needs to be forbidden to execute an attachment. If you really, really must, then you can save it to a folder somewhere, then run it from there.
Microsoft's practices of allowing users to perform any bone-headed, ill-advised actions they wish, should rank right up there with the irresponsibility of not supplying polarized plugs for electrical equipment. In fact, this situation is even more serious, since an incorrectly inserted power plug only has the potential to destroy the machine and/or the user, whereas a virus infection in a corporate network can potentially impact thousands of people.
Then that person would be infringing copyright, unless they'd received permission to distribute the recording. Hence, it would be a "true" positive, in the sense that they are illegally using the material.
To this, I would like to add that if everybody simply followed this advice, it would be impossible for employers to make such insane demands on employees, because firing them would no longer be an option: anybody they subsequently hired to replace you would also tell the employer to fuck off in such a situation.
As long as there are people willing to work like slaves, then employers will always to have an incentive to fire those who don't.
I blame the "sheep" far more than I blame the employers. The employer is just doing what makes capitalistic sense: getting more for his/her money.
He's insightful precisely because he pointed out the sexism quite clearly. I don't think he was trying to be offensive. There is a stereotype that women cannot work on cars. Now we have a car manufacturer reinforcing that stereotype.
I'd be getting pissed at Volvo, not the OP.
Oh, and by the way:
Women can do the same tasks as men, usually better.
How are you not being a sexist pig? Oh, and try to piss off a cliff without using your hands... I bet I can do better :-)
Didn't open didn't open? Or didn't open because you didn't know about the locking lever near the hood latch that you have to press upward in order to disengage the latch?
Please tell me you didn't get rid of your car because you didn't even bother reading the manual...
You are, of course, aware that "bonnet" is what the Brits call the hood of a car?
Another hint: they don't call the trunk a "trunk" either.
And of course, the article clearly stated that the reason women don't need a hood is because they're too stupid to know what to do once it's open. Which is, of course, an extremely offensive and idiotic viewpoint.
You clearly work too far down on the "pecking order" to realize that most executives are actually buffoons. At the low levels of corporate structure, the grunts get memos that have been carefully scrutinized by secretaries, legal eagles, etc. The boss may have written it originally, but it's been edited so you don't realize he's an idiot.
OTOH, in a smaller company where you have easier access to the higher echelons of power structure (or, if you happen to have a way of intercepting communications between top-level execs) you quite commonly see grammar and spelling of the sort demonstrated in this memo. These people usually tend to be articulate in person (this is a necessary trait for any negotiator) but they can be absolutely abysmal spellers.
This guy probably hasn't gotten fired for being an idiot because his boss probably makes even more mistakes than he does.
Don't make the extremely wrong assumption that the people at the top are there because they are much more intelligent than you. They are much more devious, better at ass kissing, and have people working for them whose only job is to prevent them from looking like morons.
That statement just proved that you have no idea what the O() notation means. Please, take off the teaching cap, you're going to hurt somebody.
I'm starting to wonder if you are, in fact, a very good troll. You refer to Dr. Dobbs as a "computer science journal," you make references to nonsensical concepts like "O(2)", you claim to have made a "publication" which actually turns out to be a poorly spelled posting on a programming discussion board, and you do all this as you criticize actual computer science students for not having learned anything in school.
That so many people have fallen for it thus far is utterly amazing to me.
Knowing what the term means, and knowing how to actually prove that an algorithm is O(x), are two different things. Can you prove that general sorting cannot be less than O(n log n)? This is fundamental. If you can't do it, you do not know computer science. (Flip side of coin: if you can, then you are at least heading the right direction).
"game programming is not real comp-sci!" (tell that to my collision algorithms or research into better timing methods)
A hobbyist tinkering in the garage does not a scientist make. Put out a publication comparing your methods with other known methods. Give theoretical upper and lower bounds on run time, memory usage, jitter, etc. Criticize yourself and explain the defects in your methods. Submit it to peer scrutiny. That's science.
Wow, it's really great to see a spectator who appreciates our sport. Sadly, merely looking up to someone does not magically transfer their knowledge into your skull.
It's just too bad that comp-sci isn't very well taught anymore. 90% of the current crop of comp-sci students should probably be flunked.
Sorry, you don't have the authority to sit on the sidelines of a field you admit you having no training in, and criticize the methods by which it is taught. Not to even mention that gigantic generalization you make by assuming that whatever your limited experience of CS teaching methods is must be how it's taught everywhere.
You feel better about yourself because you labeled a valid opinion as a troll? Dude, you need to get out more.
You need to get out more. I suggest college as a worthwhile destination.
Don't read too much into it. It might just be a bad day.